Who can tell me what I can do with my own body? The church? “Society”? The Bible? Playboy? A catechist? “Sex and the City”? With the high school students I teach, only one answer works: the objective facts and honest reasoning. Only the objective facts decide which of those c
Karl Rahner, S.J., (1904-84) and Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88), are in my estimation the two most influential Catholic theologians of the 20th century. Rahner, a German Jesuit priest profoundly influenced by the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, spent his life primarily as a teacher and
“Recovering the founder’s charism”—this is how Lawrence Goyette, F.S.C., described the impulse that led to the opening of the first-ever San Miguel School—a middle school that began almost a decade ago in Providence, R.I. During a visit in June, Bro. Lawrence explained
To explain how my experience as a parent has been a spiritual path, I have to begin seven years before my first child was born. At age 22, I was feeling more lost in my life than I’ve ever been before or since. My life was devoid of meaning and more than grim. In my lowest moment I latched ont
Before my sister’s son, Charles, was born four years ago, I found it difficult to understand why people found their children’s comments so amusing. Certainly I had friends and relatives with young and often precocious children, but when they repeated their supposedly hilarious comments t
Life Experience
For some time now, I have intended to write you to commend you on your excellent writing and articles on the sexual abuse issues in the Catholic Church. The report in Signs of the Times (7/29) about the remarks of Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz prompts me to write.
Even death penalty proponents do not want to see innocent people executed. In recent times, though, a number of prisoners have come within minutes of a walk to the death chamber before being exonerated of a capital crime. In Illinois alone, 13 men on death row were freed within the past two decades.